Bilingual Education and Its Reflection on Performance in Standardized Testing

Abstract

This research study examines the balance between the native language and English language at international schools that offer bilingual education. The performance in language standardized testing has been analyzed to learn more about students’ language skills in terms of language skills (i.e., foundational, literacy and literature, and vocabulary use) compared to what is expected at their ages. The gender, educational level, the kind of language course (i.e., language use and reading) were considered to examine whether bilingualism leads them to proficiency or distraction. Random dataset samples of a total of 1131 students from different international schools offering bilingual K-12 have been collected for this research study. A Chi-square analysis was run to examine the correlation between gender, educational levels, and the taken courses from one side and vocabulary use scores, foundational skills scores, and literacy and literature scores from another side. The results showed that female students at bilingual schools are more likely to have low scores, elementary school students are more likely to have low scores, and students in reading are more likely to have low scores.